


Fox Sleep

by moonix



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe – Magic, Alternate Universe – No Exy, Found Families, Healing, M/M, Mostly soft because I'm a softie, Scrabble, Seasonal, Winter, Witches and Familiars, platonic intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-02 04:52:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: A shapeshifter stuck in his fox form arrives looking for shelter at the Foxhole Sanctuary for witches and familiars. Andrew takes it upon himself to find out if he's a threat - among other things.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Phew, this idea has been brewing for a long time. Work has been eating up all my time and energy lately but I finally finished it! Half my world-building didn't actually make it into the fic, so if anything is unclear or you're curious about something, feel free to ask.
> 
> Big shout out and thank you hug to my beta Bee (exybee), who came up with the punny names for the chickens... you'll know when you see them. :)
> 
> (Also, fox sleep is a term for feigned sleep. Which I found fitting for Neil, idk.)
> 
> Warnings for implied/mentioned past violence and animal cruelty, but nothing explicit.

Someone crashes through the wards.

It’s like a gong being struck inside Andrew’s head, and it hurts right down to his fingertips.

“Breach,” he snaps, scattering cutlery and bits of egg as he shoots up from the breakfast table. “North, by the stream. Now.”

The others break into a flurry of motion. They might not like Andrew, but they trust his wards—a mistake in Andrew’s book. No one knows better than Andrew himself that his wards aren’t perfect; magic isn’t perfect. Andrew doesn’t listen to them as they arrange a hasty patrol. He feels glazed over like he’s only half here; the rest of him is out there at the Northern border of the sanctuary, still feeling the aftershocks of the breach.

Wymack, Dan and Matt follow him outside with Arta, Dan’s familiar—Andrew dimly notes that Renee stays behind, and something relaxes a fraction inside him. It took a long time until he was able to release Aaron, Nicky and Kevin into her protection even temporarily, but here they are. Trust—such a foolish, fickle thing; and yet.

The morning is sharp and cold, a blade buried under snow. Andrew himself walked the perimeter just an hour ago, checking and mending, tightening and reinforcing. Nothing should have been able to break through so easily. He scans the underbrush for footprints and the trees for broken branches but everything is still and pristine, the wood calm. The intruder must be powerful, to lull these trees into accepting them. Which means they've fooled both Andrew’s and Renee’s magic in one day.

Andrew grinds his teeth. He must have done it a lot in his sleep last night because pain shoots through his jaw at the renewed pressure. There’s a flash of heat in the periphery of his senses, a brief awareness of the tang of blood on the air. He turns sharply, slips underneath a heavy branch and finds—

“A fox,” Dan says, still warily keeping her dog at bay. “I thought animals didn’t set off the wards.”

“It’s injured,” Matt croons, already reaching out. Andrew blocks his path, knocking his arm away.

“Not a fox.”

Dan sucks in a breath.

“Shapeshifter?”

Well done, Sherlock. Andrew ignores her in favour of crouching down beside the not-a-fox. Its red fur is matted and dirty, the wounds littering its body are mostly scabbed over, some still oozing quietly. They look nasty, though not as bad as the patch of burned skin on its face, just underneath a pale blue eye. It’s the bruised blue of fresh snow in the evening, the kind that spells danger for anyone venturing outside past sunset. Frostbite eyes, Andrew thinks.

“If that’s a shapeshifter and they’ve made it here, that means they need help,” Matt says decisively. “They wouldn’t have found us otherwise or been able to get through Andrew’s wards. Besides—this place is literally called the Foxhole Sanctuary. It’s like a sign.”

“Or a warning,” Andrew says.

“Guess we won’t know until they shift back,” Wymack grunts. They all turn to look expectantly at the fox, but its eyes are still fixed on Andrew. Pleading, maybe. It’s too calm for that though—like it’s given its fate over to some higher power and can only wait for the verdict. There’s something about it that feels-

No. Andrew refuses to be that higher power.

“We’ll take them to Abby,” Wymack decides. Andrew doesn’t object. His energy is a carefully rationed good; he’s stopped wasting it on arguing with a stubborn bunch of bleeding hearts who don’t listen to him anyway.

Doesn’t mean he won’t be keeping a close eye on the thing.

He takes off his jacket and bundles the fox up, not bothering to be gentle. There’s a low whine of pain but no struggle. Its eyes slip closed as Andrew carries it back to the main house. Arta bounds ahead, Dan and Wymack talk in hushed voices behind him and Matt frets uselessly to the side, but Andrew’s attention is half on the bundle in his arms and half on the wards burning bright in his awareness. Nothing else breaks through; the forest remains still and sleepy like nothing has happened at all.

It sets Andrew’s teeth on edge.

He pushes through into Abby’s workshop without knocking and dumps the unconscious fox on her table, leaving Wymack to explain. Abby gets to work immediately, focus narrowing down on the broken body in front of her, and Andrew retreats to the window ledge on the other side of the room. Close enough to intervene if anything happens, but with enough space around him on all sides that he can breathe. Sunlight warms his back through the window as he pokes the wards in his mind one by one, plucking at them like strings and listening to their familiar hum. Nothing is out of tune, but he’s still going to have to do another perimeter check as soon as possible, see for himself that there’s no damage, no gap in their defences.

When Abby is done cleaning and patching up their surprise guest, she lays the unconscious fox down gently in a nest of blankets on the floor and places a bowl of water and some fruit and strips of meat nearby. She casts one last incantation to alert her when the fox wakes up, then she joins Andrew by the window.

“A common red fox shifter. As far as I can tell he’s male, probably in his mid-twenties. He’ll live,” she says curtly. Of course he will, Andrew doesn’t say. “Some of the wounds were in a rough state, but I was able to draw out the infection. He’s still feverish and he’ll need a lot of rest and some decent meals before he’ll be strong enough to shift back again. I’d give it a couple of days minimum. He’s not in any shape to present a danger to anyone right now.”

Maybe not right now, Andrew thinks. But in a couple of days?

Wymack comes in and Abby tells him the same things. Andrew is itching to check on his wards, and as if reading his thoughts Renee appears at the door, ready to assume guard duty while he makes his rounds. She nods at him as he passes and takes up sentinel on the window ledge, perching like a bird. She’s no shapeshifter, but she looks a bit like her familiar with her white hair and her keen eyes. Andrew has tried asking her what came first—the snowy owl or the hair dye—but Renee only ever smiles mysteriously in response.

He doesn’t miss his jacket until he’s back outside and the biting wind sticks its icy fingers under his shirt.

-

The fox sleeps most of the day. Once Andrew is satisfied that all of their defences hold he grabs a couple of bacon sandwiches and a cup of tea from the kitchen and holes himself up in Abby’s workshop, watching the snow drift past the windows and the breath go in and out of the fox’s curled-up form. The others come by every once in a while to ogle the newcomer but get bored when all he does is sleep. Bee helps Abby out with some potions and the two women keep up a quiet stream of inane conversation that Andrew lets wash past him without listening. He makes up one of the cots for himself that Abby keeps in her workshop for emergencies. Sleep is elusive that night though, the sound of light breathing in the room keeping him awake despite how exhausted he is.

He finally dozes off in the wee hours of the morning and is roused again by a soft lapping noise. He pries his eyes open without moving and waits until they adjust to the dim light. The fox is awake and drinking from the bowl Abby left for him. One of his hind legs is in a splint and some of his wounds still have remnants of a thick green healing paste on them, but Abby’s done a decent job of cleaning him up otherwise.

The lapping stops. The fox’s head swivels over and his eyes unerringly find Andrew’s across the room. Andrew is sure he didn’t move or make a sound, but there’s no reason to be stealthy now that the fox knows he’s there, so he slips from the cot and walks over.

The fox hastily retreats into his blanket nest—Andrew can see his jacket poking out of the mess and tamps down a brief flash of irritation. The fox’s movements are so stiff and awkward that Andrew wonders if he’s faking it to garner sympathy or make himself look less threatening.

Andrew moves the bowls of food and water out of reach and pulls a squashed packet of cigarettes from his pocket, putting it on the ground between them. He lets the lighter dance over his knuckles, mostly to curb the instinctive craving—he hasn’t smoked one since last year, since they’re too difficult to get up here. Seeing the pack still coaxes a tired Pavlovian response from his battered synapses, though. He carries it around mostly to prove to himself that he can resist it, and for the comforting shape and weight of it in his pocket.

“Tap once for no and twice for yes,” he says, tapping the box to demonstrate. The fox looks at the lighter in Andrew’s hand for a moment, the fur on his back twitching nervously, then snakes out a paw to tap twice lightning-quick.

Andrew remembers the burned patch on his face, now hidden under healing salve, and puts the lighter away. For now.

“I am going to ask questions and you are going to answer. If I find out you lied to me, I will skin you alive. Are we clear?”

The fox tilts his head and huffs as if amused. Then he reaches out to tap the box twice for yes, somehow succeeding in making the movement look sarcastic.

Too many questions are jostling for space in Andrew’s mind, but with their limited yes-or-no choice for answering there isn’t much use in asking any of them right now.

“The ones who hurt you,” Andrew says slowly. “Are they still after you?”

The fox hesitates.

“Don’t even think of lying,” Andrew reminds him, pushing the cigarette pack at him. The paw jerks away from the sudden contact before returning cautiously to tap twice again for yes. Andrew considers his next question.

“Does anyone know where you are?”

Once for no. Andrew waits, but no second tap comes.

“Are you sure?” he prods. “You really told no one? Didn’t even mention it in passing, or where someone could overhear? You didn’t let a friend or family member know that you were coming here? No one saw you come up the mountain?”

The fox glares balefully at him for asking too many grammatically ambiguous questions and Andrew carefully backtracks.

“I’m going to ask you again. Does anyone know where you are?”

Another tap for no, this time more vehement and accompanied by an impatient huff.

Andrew sorts through the rest of the questions in his mind, but he’s starting to tire of the game and if the fox is saying the truth and no one knows he’s here, that means they probably have some time to decide what to do with him before anyone comes knocking. At the very least Andrew can have a proper conversation with him once he’s recovered enough strength to shift back.

He puts the cigarette box away in his pocket and nudges the bowls back into place where the fox can reach them.

-

The fox stays in Abby’s workshop over the next couple of days. Andrew double-wards it but still barely sleeps at night, one ear constantly listening for trouble. All the fox does is nap, eat and drink though, and occasionally stretch his legs. Watching him limp awkwardly around the workshop or squeeze laboriously through the cat flap to relieve himself outside is somewhat entertaining, but the endless procession of people trying to interact with him grates on Andrew’s nerves. Abby has banned familiars from the workshop for now—there are simply too many of them at the sanctuary, not even counting the half a dozen stray cats that come and go as they please. The fox’s many injuries start scabbing over, which prompts Abby to muse loudly on whether she should put a collar on him to prevent him from biting at them. He looks a little bit chastened, but Andrew catches him scratching at a scab again the minute Abby’s back is turned.

“We can’t just keep calling him _the fox_ ,” Matt complains over dinner. He and some of the others have all crammed themselves into the workshop, sitting in a semi-circle around the fox’s blanket nest with bowls of root vegetable stew. The floor is covered in breadcrumbs. The fox in question does a good job of looking cute and harmless when they feed him bits of food, but Andrew sees the way his eyes dart between the exits from time to time.

“It’s not like he can tell us his name until he shifts back,” Dan says.

“We could try to guess it,” Allison suggests, lounging on a stack of cushions like it’s her throne. “Might as well make a bet of it. Who’s in?”

 _Bet_ is a magic word within these walls. An instant squabble breaks out, and for the next half hour everyone shouts out increasingly ridiculous names, none of which the fox shows any reaction to in the slightest.

“We’ll just give him a temporary name until he can tell us,” Dan decides once the noise level simmers back down to a peeved murmuring.

Everyone turns to the fox, who is busy sneaking persimmon slices from Renee’s bowl while Renee graciously pretends not to notice. His face immediately morphs into a picture of innocence, which Matt takes as agreement.

“Great! I think he looks like a… Neil. What do you think, buddy? Wanna be a Neil?”

The fox tilts his head before giving a short bark. Matt throws his arms into the air, victorious.

“That’s not fair,” Nicky pouts. “We should have put it to a vote.”

“And let you name the poor thing Foxkit Snufferson?” Allison snorts. “We have enough unfortunately-named pets running around this joint, Hemmick.”

“I was going to suggest Kit Hairyngton,” Nicky grins.

“Enough,” Dan says. “We’ll go with Neil. Now get your butts in gear, Abby said he needs rest and we promised to clean up after ourselves here.”

Andrew stays on his perch on the window sill, watching them scramble. The newly baptised Neil makes use of the commotion and squirrels the last of Renee’s persimmons away—knowing Renee, she probably left them behind on purpose. Andrew waits until the last straggler of the lot stumbles out the door before following, leaving Neil alone with his spoils of war.

It’s his turn to feed the chickens tonight. Andrew doesn’t care enough to try and weasel his way out of the chores like Nicky and Allison do, but he doesn’t care about the chickens to a slightly lesser degree than he does about the rest. Their clucking and crooning is a good backdrop for emptying his mind of the junk that routinely collects in it, and Andrew has managed to teach them a few tricks for his own amusement. The matriarch—Hen Solo, one of Nicky’s unfortunately named victims—totters over to inspect tonight’s offerings of grain, vegetable peels and cottage cheese. The resident rebel chick, Amelia Egghart, tries to get at the goods before Hen Solo gives her approval and receives a vehement peck from the old lady for her cheek.

Andrew sits in the chicken coop until they’ve all settled down for the night. The house is quiet on his way back to his quarters save for the muffled noise of the TV in the communal living room. Walking through the dark corridors, Andrew feels wide awake. He doubles back just before he reaches his room and retraces his steps to the workshop. Abby’s and Bee’s voices trickle out from under Abby’s office door, underscored by the chime of a wine bottle against the rim of a glass. Andrew slips past on hushed feet and into the workshop, lighting one of the smaller lamps on his way.

There’s a thump as a surprised fox tries to wiggle out from underneath a dresser as fast as he can. He freezes guiltily when he sees Andrew. Something is scattered on the ground around him and Andrew traces the spill of small cream tiles back to Abby’s board game shelf. A massive Scrabble box has been upended, missing half its letters and runes.

Neil bats weakly at a wayward X, watching for a reaction. Andrew walks over, picks up one of Allison’s abandoned cushions and sits on the floor in front of the pile of letters.

He chooses two and spells NO.

Neil painstakingly puts together a defiant YES.

Andrew stares at the letters. They blur a little in front of his eyes. Maybe he was more tired than he thought—or maybe a game of Scrabble is just what he needs.

He uses Neil’s Y to spell WHY and says: “Why are you here?”

Neil considers the question, then pushes a few tiles underneath his S to spell SAFE.

Andrew turns the F into FROM. Neil shapes the O into OUCH, something like sarcasm in his gaze, or maybe that’s a challenge. Andrew purloins the H and makes WHO, refusing to back down, and Neil thinks for a moment before messing with Andrew’s earlier NO. When he steps aside to let Andrew see, Andrew almost huffs out an amused noise at the cheeky NUNYA: none of your business.

Fine.

He tries a different approach and turns the second N into NAME. Neil takes a long time to answer that one, and then he just writes NEIL.

They go back and forth like this until they run out of tiles. Andrew manages to squeeze in a few runes toward the end, which gains him enough points to pull ahead by a slim margin. Neil grins at him, which somehow makes him look even more like a fox, and very casually slots his last tiles into place to spell JINX: something that brings bad luck.

“Are you?” Andrew asks. His voice comes out raspy from disuse. He blinks down at their sprawling game and his eyes feel dry and sore from squinting at the letters in dim light for so long. Neil flicks his tail up and down like a shrug. He reaches out and taps three letters in quick order: W-I-N. I win.

Andrew shrugs back and starts gathering up the tiles. They go into a scuffed velvet bag that Andrew puts within reaching distance of Neil on the shelf. He watches as Neil turns a few circles in his nest and settles down with a sigh.

For an instant, Andrew feels it again—like catching a whiff of the faintest scent, not quite enough to put his finger on it before it’s gone.

He closes the door quietly behind himself on his way out.


	2. Chapter 2

Andrew always makes his rounds early in the morning, at the first bleary-eyed glimpse of sunlight. He doesn’t sleep much anyway, and there’s something to be said for being up before anyone else. Sometimes he runs into Wymack in the kitchen, but they have an unspoken agreement that neither of them will try to interact. Wymack makes his coffee and Andrew makes whatever hot drink is within closest grabbing range and they go their separate ways.

Snow creaks under his boots. Clouds are bunched in the sky like crumpled clothes leftover from the night before. The air is laced with ice, making Andrew’s blood sing and his breath billow in front of his face. Something is off today. He stops; listens. There: the tiniest noise. Like a-

“Fox,” Andrew says. There’s a pause before Neil shuffles out from behind a log, looking sheepish.

A sheepish fox. A fox in sheep’s clothing. Oh, how fun.

“Go back to bed.”

The words sublimate in front of his mouth, from sound straight to steam. Andrew can almost see the Scrabble grid in the air. After a moment Neil turns and disappears soundlessly in the underbrush. It must be hard for him—his leg hasn’t finished healing yet. Either it’s not nearly as bad as Abby proclaimed it to be or Neil is actively suppressing the limp. And Abby, for all her fussing, is not one to overdiagnose.

Andrew continues on his path. For a while he’s unimpeded, working his way quietly around the perimeter of the sanctuary. Then the feeling returns, a ghostly sensation somewhere along his spine, like an itch he can’t locate. He stops again, waits for the fox to catch up.

There’s a muffled, warbling sound and Andrew glances behind himself just in time to see Neil emerge from hiding, carefully holding a dead rabbit in his muzzle. Interesting. Most shapeshifters would find hunting for their own food distasteful, savage even—completely unlike buying and consuming mass-produced, pre-packaged meat that someone else had to kill for their convenience, of course—but Neil looks unfazed, like he’s used to it.

He whines a little when Andrew doesn’t say anything, before lying the rabbit in the snow at Andrew’s feet.

Andrew stares down at it and wonders what the cost of the “gift” is. He steps neatly around the carcass and starts walking again, though this time he doesn’t waste his breath objecting when Neil follows. The limp is more pronounced again and he’s panting from the strain of keeping up and carrying the dead rabbit, but he doesn’t falter. He only pauses when they near the chicken coop, ears rotating curiously. Andrew doesn’t bother warning him—the coop is a well-protected fortress and this particular flock has proven itself very resilient. Hen Solo in particular is a force to be reckoned with; several of the dogs have had to learn this the hard way. Neil, who is quite small for a fox, will fare no better if he tries anything.

Next time they play Scrabble, Andrew is going to ask him how long he’s been in his fox form. He still remembers the talk Abby gave Jean when he first arrived at the sanctuary two years ago, about the risks of staying in any one form for too long.

He leaves Neil to sneak around the coop and goes to unceremoniously dump the rabbit on Wymack’s desk. Wymack curses, but he won’t pass up free meat for dinner, not when his next supply run to the closest village won’t be until Midwinter—the sanctuary is trying to keep a low profile, after all, especially now that Kevin is here. They are self-sufficient in a lot of ways and the mountain is notoriously difficult to navigate. That and Kayleigh’s old magic affords them some protection, but they can’t stay completely cut off from the outside world. Andrew, for one, wouldn’t be staying here if they didn’t have chocolate.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Neil is waiting for him outside his room again the next day. Andrew pulls his hood over his head and stuffs his hands in his pockets, warm inside the gloves Bee knitted him last year. Neil follows Andrew’s general trajectory through the forest, though he dips in and out of the underbrush as he pleases, sometimes disappearing for several minutes at a time before Andrew becomes aware of his presence again. He shows up with another dead rabbit for Andrew that Andrew is just going to keep dumping on Wymack, not in the mood to deal with this strange new ritual.

They run into Dan and Matt on their way back. Dan’s familiar immediately bounds up to greet Neil with excited barks, but Neil takes one look at the large dog and hightails it back into the forest. He’s fast as the devil despite his bad leg. Dan whistles to call Arta back and she trots over with a confused whine at the loss of a potential new playmate.

“Skittish, isn’t he?” Matt laughs, patting Arta as she crowds up against his side. A crow caws in a branch overhead and Matt looks up. “Don’t be mean, Jean. You were the same when you first got here.”

The shifter dignifies that with another mutinous caw and flies off, presumably to spy on Neil.

“Why was he with you, anyway?” Dan asks, eyes narrowed at Andrew. The dead rabbit still lies in the snow where Neil dropped it before bolting and Andrew picks it up wordlessly. Its pelt is soft and cold underneath his fingers. Matt whistles when he sees it.

“Hey, that’s great, we could really use another hunter,” he says.

“Is that actually safe to eat?” Dan asks, and Matt frowns.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well-” She falters. Andrew can practically see her trying to find a way to ask about rabies without sounding too offensive. Jean used to be their only shifter before Neil arrived—they aren’t exactly common, and although Bee has been expanding the sanctuary’s library, there’s still precious little public information on them. According to Jean, crow shifters aren’t affected by Avian flu, but Jean hasn’t exactly made a name for himself by being the most truthful and open during his time here. Since it’s Abby who declared Neil healthy enough to stay at the sanctuary without endangering anyone, though, Andrew is more inclined to believe it.

He leaves Dan to flounder through that conversation by herself and takes the rabbit to Wymack.

-

It is less them settling into a routine than the routine settling over them, like snow piling up overnight. One morning, Andrew wakes up and finds himself neck-deep in it. Quiet morning rounds with a fox who is more interested in getting the jump on unsuspecting mice than helping with the wards extend to feeding Neil scraps from his breakfast under the table and taking care of any chores that need doing while Neil gets underfoot. The cats seem to tolerate if not like the newcomer; the chickens are at all-out war. Neil still avoids the dogs, with the result that they only get keener on him every time he eludes them. Andrew can’t tell if Neil and Jean are friends or enemies or a bit of both, but they squabble over everything—the best napping spot in the common room, the juiciest bites at dinner, the shiniest cat toys, the plumpest berries. Fruit in general seems to be Neil’s favourite type of food, and Andrew finds himself carrying around apples, plums and acorns for Neil to snack on during their morning rounds.

Everyone dotes on Neil. The evenings are spent playing Scrabble in the workshop or watching TV with the others. Neil becomes obsessed with at least three different serials, much to the general delight. Something Wicked is his current favourite, and Abby, Bee, Allison and Nicky religiously join him for the newest episodes every Tuesday and Thursday night, passing a bowl of popcorn around between them. Andrew doesn’t care for soap operas but he isn’t impartial to popcorn, especially not when it’s Bee’s turn to make it and she breaks out the maple syrup. He may have to bleach his brain before long to get rid of all the inane, poorly-written and poorly-played drama, but it has its perks too. Cataloguing the many different sounds in Neil’s vocal repertoire as a fox, for example, makes the time pass just a little bit faster.

“Why is he still not shifting back?” Kevin interrupts the sacred proceedings one Tuesday night, a few weeks after Neil’s arrival at the sanctuary. He leans over the back of the sofa, oblivious to the pointed silence around him and the way the popcorn bowl bypasses him entirely on its journey from one end of the sofa to the other. Neil’s tail lashes the floor where he’s lying by Andrew’s side.

“It’s been almost a month. He’s fully healed now. What’s stopping him?” Kevin persists.

“First of all, _he’s_ right here and can hear you,” Allison says archly. “Secondly, go be a dick somewhere else. Something Wicked is on.”

“I’m just _saying_ -”

“Shh,” Nicky hisses, gesturing at the screen where one of the main heartthrobs has just appeared shirtless. “ _Jeremy Knox_.”

Kevin draws breath to argue but falls suspiciously silent when his eyes land on the shirtless actor. Jean, too, has manifested out of nowhere and is lurking conspicuously by the board game table. Knox isn’t Andrew’s type—too wholesome by far—but Andrew isn’t above admitting that he makes for decent eye candy at least.

Temporarily distracted by Knox’s abs, Kevin behaves himself until the next morning. He challenges Neil to shift back over breakfast and Neil “accidentally” sweeps a bowl of porridge off the table and into Kevin’s lap. Andrew overhears Abby and Bee talk a few days later, about how trauma can mess with people’s magic and, therefore, could interfere with a shapeshifter’s ability to shift between forms. Andrew doesn’t voice any of his own theories to anyone, but he does ask Neil about it during one of their late-night Scrabble sessions.

CANT, Neil spells after some deliberation.

“Can’t why,” Andrew asks.

Neil huffs and pushes a few letter tiles around aimlessly.

“Because of the people looking for you?”

Either the answer is too complicated or Neil doesn’t want to say. He yawns demonstratively and curls up in his nest—Andrew spots his old jacket still peeking out in between Abby’s blankets. That strange sensation simmers just beneath his fingertips again, an itchy buzz in his skin like coming into a warm room out of the cold. Andrew gathers up the tiles and tidies them away just to get rid of the feeling.

Wymack puts it to a vote whether or not they should let Neil stay, even at potential risk to the sanctuary. The majority votes yes, including Kevin, though that doesn’t stop him from griping about Neil’s continued inability to shift back. After one too many interruptions of Something Wicked just to tell Neil that he needs to try harder, Neil takes his revenge by climbing Kevin’s balcony at night and treating him to his best horror movie scream. Kevin stops bugging him about it so much after that.

Neil’s feud with the chickens enters a second stage. Arta and Boomer, Seth’s Rottweiler, still haven’t had any luck in getting close to him, but he has a sort of truce with most of the other familiars. He still doesn’t trust Renee’s owl Minerva, and Aaron’s ferret seems to hate Neil’s guts.

One night, when Andrew is down in Abby’s workshop sipping hot chocolate, Neil fusses with the Scrabble tiles for a long moment and presents him with a question:

WHERE IS YOUR FAMILIAR

“Don’t have one,” Andrew says over the rim of his mug. The buzzy feeling is back and he forces it down with a large gulp of very hot hot chocolate. It tastes stale, like the pity he expects to see on Neil’s face.

It’s not there when he looks up, but that might just be because it doesn’t translate well on a fox’s features. Still. Small blessings, and all that.

Neil rearranges some letters to spell: WHY

“Don’t know,” Andrew says. “Don’t care.”

This time, he’s pretty sure Neil is judging him. Andrew scoops the tiles back into their bag and sets up a proper game. He wins this one by a hair’s breadth and adds the score to their ongoing tally—Neil is currently in the lead, but Andrew is catching up fast.

-

Midwinter creeps up the mountain despite Andrew’s best efforts to ignore it. Nicky haunts the halls with boxes of shimmery decorations and an indecent amount of beeswax candles, singing carols and reciting poetry. Abby and Bee sequester themselves in the kitchen for hours at a time, concocting all sorts of culinary mayhem. Allison is pursuing her yearly endeavour to force everyone into hideous festive sweaters—Andrew already has one, knitted by Bee, but he is careful not to wear it outside of the protection of his own room. It’s a shame, too, because it’s warmer than anything else he owns, and his morning rounds are dipping into increasingly uncomfortable temperatures.

The night before the winter solstice, insomnia once again drives Andrew from his bed. He caves just this once and puts the sweater on, because nothing can rouse Allison Reynolds from her beauty sleep, not even Andrew waiving his aesthetic in favour of comfort. The kitchen is empty, scrubbed to gleaming perfection after Abby’s latest bout of cooking, though one of the cats is fast asleep on top of the fridge.

Andrew rummages around the pantry and comes up with a few bottles of wine, some rum, Bee’s fancy cocoa powder and a bag of chocolate chips. He makes a batch of hot cocoa and caramelises brown sugar in a pan with enough ginger that the smell alone makes his eyes water. Then he pours in the cocoa, wine and rum, tosses a cinnamon stick and some star anise in, and lets the whole abomination simmer while snacking on the remaining chocolate chips.

Neil’s presence sneaks up on him. Andrew is like the metaphorical frog in a pot of water being heated slowly—or however that goes. He doesn’t really become aware of it until he nearly trips over the fox as he turns to get himself a mug.

“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters. “Do you ever mind your own business?”

Neil gives a short yip and sniffs the heavy, booze-laced air with a full-body shudder. Andrew pours himself a larger drink than planned out of sheer reactionary pettiness and settles down at the table with some of Bee’s gingerbread. She’s made it in various animal shapes, mostly resembling the familiars and pets currently in residence at the sanctuary.

“Look, it’s you,” Andrew says, holding a gingerbread fox up for inspection. He lets Neil eat it out of his hand and offers his mug as well, but Neil merely retreats with a low whine. “No? Suit yourself.”

They sit in silence while Andrew drinks his mulled wine hot chocolate. It’s potent stuff—maybe not the best choice so late at night, when he has to be up in only a few hours to check the wards. Or maybe the best choice, considering everything else.

His life, for one.

The gingerbread soaks up the worst of it, but he can still feel the buzz of the alcohol growing more and more persistent in his veins. He rarely drinks this heavily—it makes him sleepy; off-guard. An easy target. Him and, by extension, everyone else.

But everyone else is asleep, and Neil is awake with him, watching his back.

He doesn’t know where that thought came from. It formed on his brain like skin on warm milk. He scowls into his empty mug, but there are no answers to be found at the bottom. Stupid. Should’ve gone for tea leaves.

Andrew gets up to pour more wine—tries to, at least; his legs are suddenly uncooperative. A soft murmury sound alerts him to Neil taking up sentinel beside him. The murmur lengthens into a whine, and Andrew’s hand reaches out to pat his muzzle.

“Shh. Under my protection now.”

Neil trills at him, but Andrew is too drunk to figure out what that means right now. He walks very slowly back to his room and unlocks it, then locks it again behind him. This part is important. He does it again, just to be sure, except somehow Neil is inside the room with him and not outside where he belongs.

Or does he?

Andrew takes the hideous sweater off and throws it in the general direction of his armchair. The shoes are harder, but he can’t go to bed with his shoes on, and if he doesn’t go to bed then he can’t get up tomorrow and keep them all safe. That won’t do.

Sleep comes easy at last.

-

Andrew wakes to overripe sunlight and an empty ringing in his ears. He’s alone and in his own bed; that’s something at least. It takes a while until his eyes want to open properly. When they do, it’s to a pair of shoes sprawled on the floor and a careful arrangement of Scrabble tiles that read:

ITS OK

CHECKING WARDS

SLEEP IN

Andrew rubs his hands over his face and heaves himself out of bed, waiting until the dizziness eases up. He drinks some water, then grabs his sweater off the armchair and pulls it on, gathers up his shoes. Throwing open the door, he nearly runs into his brother, whose hand is raised to knock.

“You look like shit,” Aaron greets him bluntly. Then his eyes trail down to Andrew’s sweater and one of his eyebrows shoots up. “Are you aware you’re covered in fox hair?”

It’s too late to change now either way, so Andrew merely shrugs. Aaron holds up a newspaper—fuck knows where he even got it, though it’s possible Wymack brought it from his supply run and it’s been making the rounds ever since.

“Just thought you might want to know,” Aaron says stiffly, holding it out to him. “And… be careful.”

He snaps another pointed glance to Andrew’s sweater and leaves. His ferret, curled snugly in the hood of his sweatshirt, sticks its nose in the air and sneezes, probably because Andrew still smells like an active distillery.

His head gives a painful throb. Maybe, just this once, the wards can wait until noon. Neil is out there right now checking for any obvious signs of damage or decline, and Renee will keep an eye out for trouble while Andrew is indisposed.

Reluctantly, he goes back to bed and pulls the covers over himself. He still has the newspaper and he’s almost tempted to just do the crossword and ignore the rest, but Aaron’s words nag at him. He skims the headlines, finds nothing of immediate interest; flips back through the horoscopes and weather tarot and reads them again more slowly.

He finds what Aaron meant in a two-page spread about a recent crime ring bust and the consequent death of the main ringleader, who was shot during the raid on his property. There’s a side note about illegal fox hunts and dog fights involving shapeshifters, and a mention of the ringleader’s still missing son, a registered fox shifter. The journalist briefly speculates on whether the son had possibly died in the context of his father’s lucrative side business and his death been hushed up, before going on to spout the usual fake-sympathetic bullshit about the oppression and mistrust shapeshifters still face after decades of being hunted for sport in many parts of the world.

Andrew reads the rest of the article, but there’s nothing else about the missing son. His first impulse is to burn the newspaper, and the edges start smoking slightly under his tight grip before he reigns himself back in. He taps the ash off onto the floor and folds the part with the article up neatly. If it _is_ Neil-

If it is Neil, then the people who were after him before most likely have bigger things to worry about now, which means he’s in the safest place he could be.

Andrew tucks the article in his pocket. He’ll talk to Neil about it later. For now, he needs to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small warning for panic attacks/very brief reference to Andrew's past.
> 
> Thank you for the kind comments, I will try to reply soon but this week has been A Lot. I do appreciate them though. <3

Andrew stays in bed until noon before dragging himself out into the cold to check on the wards. He takes a long shower when he gets back and piles a plate high with breakfast leftovers, grabs a cup of coffee and installs himself on his armchair in the corner of the common room. The others’ festive mood rolls off him like water off a duck’s feathers. It’s not like anyone is making an effort to include him—even Nicky has more or less given up by now, though he does bring him a cup of hot apple cider and a plate of gingerbread at one point.

He watches Neil socialise, sneak food from everyone’s plates and attack stray gift wrappings. Seth trips over him, loses his balance and falls backwards into a pie dish with a furious bellow, and Aaron has to go back to the kitchen three times because Neil keeps stealing his apples and hiding them around the room. Andrew feels—not safe, never safe—but relaxed enough that he dozes off for a bit. When he wakes up, Neil is curled on the floor by his feet like a guard dog, ears turning left and right as he follows different conversations around the room and the tip of his tail twitching attentively in the carpet.

He turns and looks up at Andrew, once again unerringly aware that Andrew has just woken up even though he didn’t make a sound. Andrew picks up a broken piece of gingerbread and flicks it at Neil’s head. Neil catches it in his mouth and grins at him before getting up on his hind legs and putting his muzzle on the armrest next to Andrew’s hand.

Andrew hesitates. Neil whines and taps the armrest twice with his paw.

_Once for no, twice for yes._

Slowly, Andrew inches his hand forward until the tips of his fingers are just brushing Neil’s face. His fur is dense and silky, softer than Andrew expected. Neil tilts his head into the touch, closing his eyes. Andrew carefully slides his hand around to cup his jaw, then explores around his sensitive ears, drawing a rumbly noise from him like a purr.

“Interesting,” someone says. Andrew yanks his hand back and turns to glare at Kevin, who is standing off to the side with a stack of books under his arm. “Can shapeshifters become familiars? That would open up a whole new-”

A bushy tail streaks across Andrew’s vision and Kevin’s books go flying. Kevin yells a few choice insults after Neil, who makes an amused sound and runs straight into a high-stakes card game between Dan, Katelyn, Erik and Jean. Andrew uses the ensuing commotion for a quiet exit and finds Bee downstairs, having a civilised cup of tea in her office with her latest knitting project draped over her knees and her familiar curled up in a basket by the fireplace.

“Hello, Andrew, happy Midwinter,” she beams. “Would you like some tea?”

Andrew walks over to her desk and pours himself a cup, stirring in several teaspoons of honey. The pot is wrapped in a knitted yellow and black tea cosy with little gauzy plastic wings attached at the side. The nickname and the bee-themed knickknacks in her room are like a little private joke between them—everyone else still calls her Betsy.

“How have you been?” Bee asks as he settles into the armchair across from her. Dottie, her cat familiar, stretches her legs over the sides of the basket and blinks at him in sleepy greeting.

“Busy,” Andrew replies.

“As always,” Bee hums, blowing delicately on her tea. “You work so hard, Andrew. I had the impression you’ve been spending a lot of time with our new guest as well?”

“Some,” Andrew allows. “He is… interesting.”

“Oh, quite.”

He feels the crinkle of paper in his pocket where he put the newspaper article.

“There is something I need to tell him,” he says slowly. “But I don’t know how.”

“Just be honest,” Bee says, then smiles. “What am I saying? You always are.”

Andrew makes a little so-so motion with his head.

“What are you knitting?” he asks, signalling an end to this line of conversation. Bee picks up the new topic smoothly and shows him the cardigan she’s making for Abby, with a rabbit paw design and small, polished wooden buttons. Andrew stays until the teapot is empty and lets her talk him into going back upstairs with her for the solstice dinner. The table is already laden with food, groaning under the weight of the many pots and pans and plates, and the dining room is awash with noise, music, people and familiars. It makes Andrew’s head hurt, but the food is worth sticking it out for a little while.

Once everyone is stuffed to the gills with dessert, Matt rounds them all up for the traditional midnight walk. As usual, a snowball fight breaks out before they’ve even entered the woods. In the dark, with most people tipsy from Katelyn’s eggnog, the fight soon devolves into chaos. Andrew waits it out in the chicken coop, spinning his old cigarette pack in his hands and skimming his mental fingers over the worn pages of his wards.

He goes outside again in time to watch the damp, bedraggled procession back to the house, counting heads with Renee until everyone is accounted for. Neil bounds over happily and shakes the snow from his fur, panting open-mouthed and wagging his tail like an over-excited dog. Andrew touches his hand to his ruff and finds him still wet and shivering, and Neil whines and pushes his head up into Andrew’s palm.

“When was the last time you had a bath?” Andrew asks. Neil cocks his head to the side, ears pressed back against his skull. “Thought so,” Andrew mutters. “Come on.”

He locks and wards the doors behind him, then leads the way back to his quarters. There’s a small bathroom attached to his room and Andrew fills the bathtub halfway. Neil’s mouth pulls into a nervous grin when he sees. He backs away slowly, spine arched and tail tucked between his legs.

“Fine,” Andrew huffs and rolls his eyes. “Catch pneumonia for all I care.”

Neil whimpers, almost sullenly, and starts circling the bathtub with wary eyes. Andrew watches him for a while, then strips down to his underwear and t-shirt and steps into the tub.

“It’s just water, you big baby.”

He splashes a little bit in Neil’s direction, who squeals and leaps out of the way. There’s a playfulness to his movements now though, and soon enough he approaches the tub and clambers inside with Andrew. He splashes water everywhere and makes a big production of not being able to get purchase on the slippery tub floor until Andrew pulls him in his lap and starts scrubbing him down. All of his earlier reluctance melts out of him at once, and he flops against Andrew with soft, small whuffs of enjoyment and even lets him rub his white belly.

Afterward, Andrew wraps him in his largest towel and rubs him dry before tucking him under the blankets on his bed. He goes to rinse himself off under the shower, and by the time he gets back, Neil is fast asleep in his bed.

Andrew half-heartedly tries to move him, but he’s too tired to put much effort into the task. In the end, he takes the opposite side of the bed and sacrifices one of his pillows to the snuffling fox.

-

Somehow, Neil ends up permanently moving into Andrew’s room.

The Scrabble box comes with him, as well as Andrew’s old jacket and one of Abby’s blankets. Andrew starts discovering caches of hidden food around his bedroom—an apple in his sock drawer, a handful of acorns in the cracked mug where Andrew keeps his pens, a few dry bread crusts on top of the bookshelf. He sleeps on Andrew’s armchair, sheds reddish-brown fur everywhere, chews on Andrew’s bootlaces and enjoys headrubs when no one else is looking.

Andrew finally sits him down and shows him the newspaper clipping the week after the winter solstice. Neil is quiet at first—maybe they got it wrong, maybe he’s not the missing son mentioned in the article—but then Andrew notices the slight tremor in his legs, the way his chest has clamped down on his last breath and isn’t easing up again.

“Neil,” he says. “Breathe.”

All he manages is a slight wheeze, then a low yowl. Andrew finds the back of his neck and buries his hand in the raised fur there. Neil practically folds under his hand, presses himself low to the ground and _keens_. Andrew can feel the uneven ridges of old scars hidden under his fur and keeps his grip tight and steady until Neil starts to calm down.

“He’s dead,” Andrew says, a mantra he’s been repeating for the past several minutes. “You’re safe.”

Neil stays in their room for the rest of the day, curled up in a patch of sunlight. He seems asleep every time Andrew checks on him, but somehow he still follows the progress of the light across the room, ending up squashed in a corner with the last ruddy-golden wisp of it before it disappears altogether. The slack curl of his body is not grief, though it’s not a celebration either—Andrew thinks it’s sheer exhaustion, above all.

That night Neil sleeps in Andrew’s bed again. Andrew picks up his book, settling in for another sleepless night, and is surprised to find his eyes drooping after a few pages. He turns off the light and finds Neil’s form in the dark—he’d rather feel where he is than know him somewhere in his bed and be constantly poised for accidental contact.

And somehow, sleep descends on both of them.

It’s still early when Andrew wakes up again, earlier even than Andrew’s usual time. The morning is silky and dark, chilled to the bone. There’s a warm, heavy weight on top of Andrew, keeping out the worst of the cold. The shape of it is all wrong, though, and when Andrew lifts a hand to find out why, he meets naked skin instead of fur.

He freezes.

The body on top of him isn’t so massive that he couldn’t easily buck it off, and the person is still asleep. Yet all of Andrew’s motor functions screech to a halt at once like he’s twelve years old again, the magic in his fingertips fizzling out uselessly like a wet match.

A moment later the body moves, groggily. Andrew makes a desperate lunge for control and shoves the person off hard, and they tumble painfully over the edge of the bed, taking most of the blankets with them.

There’s a final thump and a groan, then silence. A few seconds later a fox’s tentative whine emerges, slightly muffled by blankets.

Andrew lights one of the lamps and peers over the edge. Something moves under the blankets and the lump resolves itself to be Neil, fur crushed this way and that like pillow creases, eyes blinking heavily against the light.

Andrew must have dreamed the weight on top of him. The feeling of bare skin under his fingers had been so vivid—but then, Andrew’s nightmares usually are.

He lies back down. Breathes, in and out. The shadows on the wall still look the same. He’s awake now, though, so he might as well get up and do something useful, like renewing the wards. It’s been a while since he did them all, instead of merely patching up the weak spots. It will keep him busy, too: casting wards from scratch is hard work.

The tip of a snout peeks up over the edge of the bed, followed by an inquisitive whine. Andrew swings himself out of bed and reaches down to untangle Neil from the blankets.

“I’m going out.”

Another whine, questioning.

“Do what you want,” Andrew answers it. “I don’t care.”

Neil takes it as an invitation to join him. The work takes several hours, but despite the physical effort Andrew feels refreshed when they finally get back to the house for a second breakfast and some hot tea. He takes a shower, changes into dry clothes, and even agrees to join Kevin, Allison and Renee for a card game after. Neil keeps staring at him from his spot on the couch, as if there’s something he wants to say. After two new episodes of Something Wicked and a very public argument between Seth and Allison, Andrew takes pity on him and leads him back to their room where he pulls out the Scrabble tiles.

He empties them out in front of Neil and goes to brush his teeth. When he comes back, Neil has painstakingly spelled out:

WHY ARE YOU LETTING ME STAY

“Because you’re one of them now,” Andrew says, choosing to ignore the trickier implications of _in your room_ and, worse, _in your bed_.

NOT THEM, Neil writes quickly. US

“If you say so.”

I DO

“Are you done asking stupid questions?” Andrew asks, picking up his book.

Apparently Neil isn’t quite done, because he wants to know WHAT BOOK. Andrew shows it to him. It’s the worst-written piece of crap Bee’s ever brought back from her travels for the sanctuary’s library, so Andrew is doing everyone a favour by keeping it in his room. He tells Neil so, and Neil makes a sound somewhere between laughter and mockery.

READ IT TO ME, he demands.

So Andrew does.

-

It happens again.

Andrew wakes up to a different weight in his bed, this time sprawled out beside him rather than on top of him. He doesn’t freeze, but for a long moment he doesn’t move either—the thing is, it doesn’t _feel_ like a nightmare.

The person next to him wakes up. Andrew can hear it by the way their breathing pattern changes, by the new source of tension in the room. He can’t see anything more than a faint outline of a body, nothing discernible. Then there’s a sudden intake of breath, and between one blink and the next, the body is back in its usual fox form.

“Neil,” Andrew whispers. The fox burrows himself deeper under the covers, as if he can block out whatever Andrew is going to say next.

Andrew isn’t sure himself.

In the end, he says nothing. They fall back asleep, and the next night, when Andrew wakes up to a human body lying on top of his legs, he merely reaches down and pokes at a head full of curls until Neil shifts back.

He’d be lying if he said he isn’t curious, though.

And there’s still the issue of Neil’s nakedness—the next time he shifts in his sleep, Andrew is treated to the sight of a very bare butt in the wan morning light before he squeezes his eyes shut again and kicks the curled-up form awake.

“I thought you couldn’t shift back,” he says groggily after yet another awkward early morning incident. Neil, fox again, grumbles and wiggles himself back under the blankets, a safe distance away from Andrew.

He almost misses his warmth.

Slowly, Andrew catches more and more glimpses of Neil the human. He’s about the same height as Andrew, of a slighter build and with longer legs. There are three prominent freckles on his right ankle, like an ellipsis. His hair in the morning—or after shifting—is an absolute rat’s nest of reddish curls. He has scars all over. A crooked nose. Dark eyebrows. The third toe on his left foot is slightly longer than the second.

It’s a jigsaw puzzle that Andrew doesn’t hate putting together over time. One morning he wakes up to a pair of familiar blue eyes watching him, and for once, Neil doesn’t immediately change back.

“Hey,” Andrew murmurs.

Neil tries to croak something back, but his voice is so rough he winces and falls silent.

“Should let Abby check you over,” Andrew says around a yawn. Neil pulls a face, but in the end he agrees. Andrew digs out some clothes for him to wear and then has fun watching Neil try to navigate bipedal locomotion again. He has to help him down the stairs—not that he minds the way Neil leans on him, or the way his hair somehow still smells like forest and fresh air.

Abby’s eyes widen when they come into her workshop.

“Patient for you,” Andrew quips, dumping his burden on her.

Neil gets a clean bill of health, though Abby strongly advises that he spend some time in his human form to get used to it again and to spare his body the strain of constant shifting back and forth for a while. She forces some extra nutrients on him, makes him practice walking and speaking, and when she finally releases him into Andrew’s care Neil is so exhausted that he falls asleep in Andrew’s bed the moment his head hits the pillow.

He still insists on accompanying Andrew on his morning rounds the next day. They’re slower than usual, and Neil is wearing several layers and a thick scarf courtesy of Bee. He’s still hoarse, though that doesn’t stop him from talking now that he can. He keeps up a running commentary on everything, from the chickens (“evil old hags”) and the last episode of Something Wicked (“I can’t believe they killed Ryan off, fucking bastards”) to the fact that Andrew does all of the wards by himself and never gets any credit or thanks for it (“They’re amazing, you’re amazing and we’re all so lucky to have you”).

“Do you ever shut up?” Andrew asks him, brushing away that last comment like snowflakes off his coat.

“I’ve got a backlog,” Neil says, deadpan. Then he visibly brightens: “Man, I can’t wait to tell Kevin _exactly_ what a pompous butt cheek he is.”

He continues to talk while Andrew chops firewood and feeds the chickens, though he refuses to come into the coop with him for the last one. When all the chores are done, with little to no help from Neil, they settle down in the common room with two cups of tea—“Oh fuck, I’ve missed tea”—and Neil promptly conks out mid-sentence on the couch with his feet in Andrew’s lap. Andrew finishes off Neil’s tea for lack of something else to do, then fishes the remote out between the couch cushions and turns on the TV.

Half an hour later, there’s a yelp from the doorway as Nicky almost trips over his own feet.

“Who is _that_?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Aaron says, peering over Nicky’s shoulder with a scowl. He has to get up on the tips of his toes to do that and it looks wonderfully undignified.

“No! Wait- what? You’re not saying-”

“That’s Neil. Or should I say Nathaniel?” Aaron drawls.

Someone’s done his research, it seems.

“No way,” Nicky gasps. “Was anyone going to tell me that he’s this handsome or was I just supposed to find that out myself? How long has he been human again?”

Aaron’s gaze zeroes in on Andrew, who has no intention of telling them. The commotion has attracted more people, and Andrew is pretty sure Neil isn’t actually asleep anymore, but he’s doing a damn good impression of it. Andrew almost envies him that when he overhears Allison and Nicky casually arguing over whether or not this means that Andrew is a furry (“Not if he’s only sexually attracted to Neil when he’s human”) and decides to leave Neil to his inevitable fate and go and catch up with Bee instead.

-

“So does this mean I’m your familiar now?” Neil asks one night after spectacularly creaming Andrew at Scrabble. Andrew has, admittedly, been distracted—by things that have nothing to do with Neil at all—but he’s not distracted enough to let this sort of bullshit fly.

“No,” he says. “You’re not my answer, and I sure as fuck aren’t yours.”

“Could be fun though,” Neil tries.

“Could be horrible though,” Andrew retorts.

“Probably not as horrible as eating a porcupine,” Neil says cheerfully.

“A what,” Andrew says.

“Porcupine. Spiky buggers. Don’t taste very good, either,” Neil murmurs. They’re very close, and Neil has somehow sneakily hooked his pinkie finger over Andrew’s while Andrew wasn’t paying attention. “Maybe it’s so fun that it cancels out the horrible.”

“Are we still talking about familiars?”

“Maybe,” Neil smirks. “Maybe not.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow.

“Maybe we are talking a little bit about kissing,” Neil relents. “Still, though. Could be fun.”

“More fun than eating a porcupine,” Andrew allows, and leans in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you like my fics, click subscribe or follow me on [Tumblr](https://annawrites.tumblr.com/) for updates and gratuitous cat posts.


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